Barak takes oath of office with plea for peace

JERUSALEM {AP} Recalling the blood spilled by former comrades in Israel's wars for survival, Prime Minister Ehud Barak took office Tuesday pledging to seek peace with its Arab neighbors.

Lawmakers were silent and captivated as Barak, a former commando and Israel's most decorated soldier, invoked his military past and fallen friends to bring home his call for peace.

"I do not stand alone on this podium," he said in his impassioned inauguration speech to the Knesset, Israel's parliament. "Together with me are those who returned at dawn from the bombs of the night, on their shoulders bloody stretchers and on them friends empty of any spirit of life."

Barak, who grew up on a kibbutz under the shadow of hostile Arab armies, then implored the United States and Arab nations including Egypt, Jordan and Morocco to help reach a negotiated solution to the decades-long Middle East conflict.

"From here and today, I call on all the region's leaders to stretch out their hands to meet our outstretched hands and forge a peace of the brave," he said.

In comments directed toward Syrian President Hafez Assad, Barak, the 57-year-old son of eastern European immigrants, said he would negotiate peace on the basis of U.N. resolutions 242 and 336 the clearest signal so far that he intends to offer Damascus much of the disputed Golan Heights in exchange for full peace. Barak also repeated a promise to withdraw Israeli soldiers from Lebanon within a year.

The Israeli leader's pledge to negotiate simultaneously with all of Israel's Arab neighbors and with the Palestinians seemed aimed at dispelling Palestinian concerns that peace with Syria was Israel's overriding priority. Palestinians were worried that a quick peace treaty with Syria would isolate and weaken them in their thorny negotiations with Israel.